The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

by Brad Stone

Perhaps the best story stems from the busy holiday season of 2006. A temporary employee in the Coffeyville, Kansas, fulfillment center showed up at the start of his shift and left at the end of it, but strangely, he was not logging any actual work in the hours in between. Amazon’s time clocks were not yet linked to the system that tracked productivity, so the discrepancy went unnoticed for at least a week. Finally someone uncovered the scheme. The worker had surreptitiously tunneled out a cavern inside an eight-foot-tall pile of empty wooden pallets in a far corner of the fulfillment center. Inside, completely blocked from view, he had created a cozy den and furnished it with items purloined from Amazon’s plentiful shelves. There was food, a comfortable bed, pictures ripped from books adorning the walls—and several pornographic calendars. Brian Calvin, the general manager of the Coffeyville FC, busted the worker in his hovel and marched him out the door. The man left without argument and walked to a nearby bus stop; sheepish, one might imagine, but perhaps also just a little bit triumphant.